The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility along Venezuela's coast in the first known U.S. attack on a target inside the South American country, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The strike reportedly targeted a remote dock that the Trump administration believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for shipping, the sources said.
CNN reported that no one was present at the facility at the time it was struck, so there were no casualties.
Two sources said U.S. Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support to the operation, but Col. Allie Weiskopf, a spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command, denied that, telling the outlet, "Special Operations did not support this operation to include intel support."
President Donald Trump appeared to first acknowledge the strike in an interview last week, though he offered few specifics, even after reporters later asked him directly about it.
Trump said the U.S. attacked "in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs" but declined to say whether the U.S. military or the CIA carried out the operation.
"So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area," Trump said. "It's the implementation area, that's where they implement, and that is no longer around."
The strike could further escalate tensions between the U.S. and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who Trump's administration has been urging to step down through a military pressure campaign.
The U.S. has destroyed more than 30 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in what it has described as a counter-narcotics campaign, and Trump has ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers bound for and leaving Venezuela.
Trump has repeatedly threatened strikes inside Venezuela, but until the CIA strike earlier this month, the only known U.S. strikes on Venezuelan targets were against boats suspected of drug trafficking in international waters.
One source told CNN the strike successfully destroyed the facility and its boats but said it was a largely symbolic victory, as it's just one of many ports used by Venezuelan drug traffickers. The attack also seemed to attract no attention at the time, even inside the country, the source added.
Earlier this year, Trump greenlit CIA operations in Latin America, including Venezuela, and senior administration officials have said they intend to keep targeting suspected drug smugglers using tactics similar to the ones used during the global war on terror to kill terrorists.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth compared drug traffickers to al-Qaida while speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum earlier this month.
"These narcoterrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere," Hegseth said. "And we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaida."
Newsmax reached out to the White House and the CIA for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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